Friday, June 29, 2007

Cyberspace and Blogs

Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" is one of the better (the best?) cultural critiques I've read (don't take my word for it - check out the review on Discerning Reader). This video is worth listening to the whole thing (it's an interview, the video portion isn't really needed), even if you don't agree with everything he says. I like the concluding question he says we need to ask, "Am I using this technology or is it using me?"

If 10 minutes is longer than you want to spend, then let the video load and watch from about 6:00 minutes remaining to 3:40 minutes remaining (however, by doing this you'll miss some thought provoking ideas).

I also like a related comment made by Os Guinness in a recent interview conducted on the White Horse Inn.

But it comes down in the rain or it comes from your mother's milk in this country. . . You take something as irrational currently as the blogs. Now the blogs are partly a useful counter check on the public media. But if you ever want an explosion, an orgy of irrationality and emotionality, look at the blogs. This is our world. A world of television, image, makeovers, blogs, impression management, and so on. We are living in a world that undermines truth at almost - every time you turn around.

Both of these come back to my love/hate relationship with technology. It provided the opportunity to hear the interviews with these two men, but it also demands so much time and attention. In Neil Postman's words, it is a Faustian bargain.